“Light up the three eyes,” Banneker ordered the doorman.  “Are you answered?” he said to Io.

“Ah, that’s very pretty,” she approved.  “It means ‘welcome,’ doesn’t it?”

“Welcome,” he assented.

“Then Herbert and Esther can come in, can’t they?  They’re waiting in the car for me to be rejected in disgrace.  They’ve even bet on it.”

“They lose,” answered Banneker with finality.

“And you forgive me for cajoling your big, black Cerberus, because it’s my first visit this year, and if I’m not nicely treated I’ll never come again.”

“Your welcome includes full amnesty.”

“Then if you’ll let me have one of my hands back—­it doesn’t matter which one, really—­I’ll signal the others to come in.”

Which, accordingly, she did.  Banneker greeted Esther Forbes and Cressey, and waited for the trio until they came down.  There was a stir as they entered.  There was usually a stir in any room which Io entered.  She had that quality of sending waves across the most placid of social pools.  Willis Enderby was one of the first to greet her, a quick irradiation of pleasure relieving the austere beauty of his face.

“I thought the castle was closed,” he wondered.  “How did you cross the inviolable barriers?”

“I had the magic password,” smiled Io.

“Youth?  Beauty?  Or just audacity?”

“Your Honor is pleased to flatter,” she returned, drooping her eyes at him with a purposefully artificial effect.  From the time when she was a child of four she had carried on a violent and highly appreciated flirtation with “Cousin Billy,” being the only person in the world who employed the diminutive of his name.

“You knew Banneker before?  But, of course.  Everybody knows Banneker.”

“It’s quite wonderful, isn’t it!  He never makes an effort, I’m told.  People just come to him.  Where did you meet him?”

Enderby told her.  “We’re allies, in a way.  Though sometimes he is against us.  He’s doing yeoman work in this reform mayoralty campaign.  If we elect Robert Laird, as I think we shall, it will be chiefly due to The Patriot’s editorials.”

“Then you have confidence in Mr. Banneker?” she asked quickly.

“Well—­in a way, I have,” he returned hesitantly.

“But with reservations,” she interpreted.  “What are they?”

“One, only, but a big one.  The Patriot itself.  You see, Io, The Patriot is another matter.”

“Why is it another matter?”

“Well, there’s Marrineal, for example.”

“I don’t know Mr. Marrineal.  Evidently you don’t trust him.”

“I trust nobody,” disclosed the lawyer, a little sternly, “who is represented by what The Patriot is and does, whether it be Marrineal, Banneker, or another.”  His glance, wandering about the room, fell on Russell Edmonds, seated in a corner talking with the Great Gaines.  “Unless it be Edmonds over there,” he qualified.  “All his life he has fought me as a corporation lawyer; yet I have the queer feeling that I could trust the inmost secret of my life to his honor.  Probably I’m an old fool, eh?”